StepForth Web Marketing Inc.

Yahoo’s Search Share is Tanking!

Ross Dunn — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 21:45:00 +0000

This Silicon Alley Insider Chart based on the latest Comscore U.S. search engine market share results says it all… Yahoo is on its way out as a search leader and none too gracefully. If I were a Yahoo executive it would hurt to see this no matter what future plans they had for Bing to take over. Scary stuff!

Yahoo’s Search Share is Tanking! is a post from: StepForth Web Marketing Inc.

Web Marketing Today Celebrates 15 Years!

Ross Dunn — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 23:04:34 +0000

Dr. Ralph Wilson

Web Marketing Today, one of the oldest and most respected marketing sites in the world just turned 15 years old!!

My friend and mentor Dr. Ralph Wilson started Web Marketing Today back in 1995 (at the time known as Wilson Web) after discovering that his website design clients needed help navigating the world of web marketing.

To this day Web Marketing Today has published countless thousands of posts helping small business owners, and experts alike, to understand what it takes to succeed on the Internet.

To celebrate this auspicious occasion, Ralph is kindly giving a bonus to anyone who subscribes to Web Marketing Today. Here is the deal in his own words:

To mark the 15th anniversary, anyone who subscribes to the Web Marketing Today newsletter receives six e-books/whitepapers that cover the basics of Internet marketing — a $50 value. This includes his most requested item: “The Web Marketing Checklist — 37 Ways to Promote Your Website.”

In addition to his offer and celebratory press release Ralph provided some wise tips for small business owners:

Dr. Wilson’s Web Marketing Tips for Small Business Owners

1. Get a professionally designed website. Your site needs to present the best possible face to the world. It’s the ’store front’ of your business today. A good website builds credibility and trust. Use a content management system so that you can change and add content to the site yourself.

2. Make sure the site content is optimized for search engines. If people can’t find you then you are missing out on lots of business. Many web designers still do not offer SEO (Search Engine Optimization). Title tags are the most important factor and the content on the page has to align with your title tags.

3. Start an email newsletter or a blog that people can sign up for by email. Use this vehicle to stay in touch with people and build a relationship with them. Use an email newsletter service — they are not expensive and make it very easy to do yourself.

For more information and to subscribe to Ralph’s always informative monthly newsletter and private tutorial sections please go to www.wilsonweb.com

In closing, here is a video interview Ralph did with me at Pubcon 2008 in Las Vegas titled “3 Ways a Blog Can Bring Links to Your Site with Ross Dunn“:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Web Marketing Today Celebrates 15 Years! is a post from: StepForth Web Marketing Inc.

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Lost Google Rankings Could Be Due to Google Webmaster Tools

Ross Dunn — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 19:23:18 +0000

Synopsis: If your website is suffering from some dropped rankings on Google consider checking the geographic targeting in your Google Webmaster Tools site settings and read up on how to make the right selection (or not at all).

Did you know that changing your geographic target in your GWT site settings can have an impact on your rankings? The impact can be positive in one regard and negative in the other:

Google explains the Geographic Target setting (more info here):

If your site targets users in a particular location, you can provide us with information that will help determine how your site appears in search results, and also improve our search results for geographic queries. You can only use this feature for sites with a neutral top-level domain, such as .com or .org. Country-specific domains, such as .ie or .fr, are already associated with a country or region. If you don’t want your site associated with any location, select Unlisted. (Note: If you do this, your site will probably receive less traffic from Google.)

Example #1: A USA-Based Site Catering to the USA and Canada

If the owner of this website were to set her site’s setting to target users in the United States there is a very real possibility she will be limiting her visibility on Google.ca’s “Pages from Canada” search; where part of her clientele is searching. On the flip side it is quite possible she would increase her foothold on USA-based searches; searches on Google.com. In this scenario it is best NOT to set her site’s Geographic Target (totally leave it alone) which will mean stiffer competition; a necessary sacrifice since she is targeting two geographic markets.

Example #2: A Canadian-Based Site Catering Exclusively to Canadians

In this scenario the Canadian site owner is targeting Canadians only. As a result, she should set “Canada” in her site’s Geographic Target setting in order to benefit from the possibility of higher rankings on Google for Canadian searches. She could end up having less top rankings on Google.com (vs. Google.ca) but that is not a concern for her so the decision is a simple one.

So What About the Unlisted Setting?

I do not use the Unlisted setting because, in my opinion, it provides unnecessary information to Google. After all, if you just leave the Geographic Target setting alone instead of choosing “Unlisted” the impact should be the same without introducing yet another variable to consider if your rankings falter; the more variables the harder it can be to determine the culprit that triggered a lower ranking.

If you would like more information on the Geographic Target setting here is a video from a Google engineer:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Lost Google Rankings Could Be Due to Google Webmaster Tools is a post from: StepForth Web Marketing Inc.

Geo Tags – What Are They and Why You Need Them

Scott Van Achte — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 23:29:40 +0000

If your business either has a traditional brick and mortar store front, or your site can value by being associated with your location, then you can benefit from Geo Tags. If your location is irrelevant to your online success, then Geo Tags will be of little use to you.

Geo Tags are trivially easy to implement and they can help to improve your ranking results for searches specific to your area. This ultimately results in higher search rankings and increased targeted traffic to your site.

Does Google Use Them?
Currently Google most likely ignores Geo Tags. I say “most likely” because JohnMu, a Google employee, recently stated in a forum thread:

“We generally ignore geo-meta tags like that because we’ve found that they’re generally incorrect”

He says “we generally ignore” them. This does imply that in some cases they don’t ignore them, and that there is no definite answer of “no”. With this in mind, that leaves room for the possibility that Google does pay attention to these tags. Because these tags can cause no harm (if used correctly), and because in most cases they are trivial to implement, it just makes sense to include them.

What About Bing?
Another reason to consider these tags is that Bing does in fact use them to influence search results. While MSN’s roughly 10% market share may cause you to say, “Who cares about Bing?” Remember that the recent deal with Yahoo provides a very strong possibility that Yahoo will be displaying Bing results before we know it. That deal will bump Bing’s 10% share up to 30%+, suddenly making Bing a worth while engine to be found on.

What Are The GeoTags?
So what are these tags and how do we implement them? Geo Tags consist of three simple meta tags to add to your home page; position, placename, & region.

1.) Geo.Position
The Geo Position tag simply consists of the latitude and longitude of your business. There are a number of tools online to help you find your latitude and longitude. One simple easy to use tool can be found over at itouchmap.com. Simply drag the arrow to your location on the map, and it will display this information for you. For Victoria BC, You would use “48.4;-123.4”.

2.) Geo.Placename
The Geo Placename simply consists of your city/town and province; “Victoria, British Columbia” for example.

3.) Geo.Region
Your geo region tag should include the ISO 3166-2 country subdivision code as per the ISO (International Organization for Standardization). You can find your corresponding country code on the ISO.org website.

If your location is British Columbia Canada, your code will be “CA-BC”. The first half is the two digit country code, the second is the 2 character state/province abbreviation.

For a real world example, StepForth would use the following:

Simply add these three tags to your home page, with the appropriate content, and you’re all done. In most cases adding these tags to your site should not take more than a few minutes.

And that’s all there is to it!

Geo Tags – What Are They and Why You Need Them is a post from: StepForth Web Marketing Inc.

Is This Link Any Good?

September 2009 U.S. Search Engine Rankings by comScore

Ross Dunn — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 21:19:33 +0000

Just an hour ago comScore released the U.S. search engine rankings for September. Without further adieu here is the lowdown on the search engine wars:

* Based on the five major search engines including partner searches and cross-channel searches. Searches for mapping, local directory, and user-generated video sites that are not on the core domain of the five search engines are not included in the core search numbers.

Americans conducted 13.8 billion searches in September, down 1 percent from August (which had one additional day compared to September). Google Sites accounted for 9 billion searches, followed by Yahoo! Sites (2.6 billion), Microsoft Sites (1.3 billion), Ask Network (541 million) and AOL LLC (416 million).

(Source: comScore Report)

September 2009 U.S. Search Engine Rankings by comScore is a post from: StepForth Web Marketing Inc.

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How To Optimize for Google Images – 10 Tips

Scott Van Achte — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 23:41:14 +0000

There are several billion images indexed in Google Images. Are yours there? If you’ve been wondering what it takes to get your images ranking, then this article is for you. Here are some tips to help you increase the exposure of your images, and with a little luck, have them appearing at the top of the regular web search results.

1. Image File Name
The first step towards having your images appear in image search is with the image file name. When naming images consider using a target word or phrase whenever it makes sense to do so. If you run a hotel, consider naming a photo of your building as “victoria-hotel.jpg”.

Use hyphens instead of underscores in file names. While these days underscores are supposedly being treated as word separators by Google, consider sticking with hyphens to play it safe.

2. Image Alt Text
Always have relevant image alt text on all photos and images. By using relevant alt text containing your target phrase (as long as it is relevant to the photo) you can increase your odds for rankings.

3. Image Title Attribute
Don’t forget about the “title” attribute. Be sure to add this and use it to describe the image accurately and briefly. (“title=”Victoria hotel photo”), This will help add a bit more relevance to the image and will also assist with usability for those using screen readers and other assisted browsing methods.

4. Surrounding Text
The textual content of the website immediately before and after the image will also impact its ability to rank well in Google image search. Be sure to include your target phrase within close proximity to the image in question for best results.

5. Optimize Your Website
Having the pages that your images reside on optimized for the particular terms will help in getting the images themselves ranked. Be sure that your content, page titles, meta description tags, etc, are all optimized.

6. Image Resolution
Higher resolution images are often given some priority in the results. I have seen many low-res images appear highly ranked as well as incorporated into the web search, so this is not entirely necessary, but can still help. That said, I would not recommend using HTML to resize a high-res image as this will have significant negative effects on your page load time. You can however link small images to full high resolution versions.

7. Image Specific Page
When linking to higher resolution images consider creating a very basic HTML page for the image. Optimize this page for the exact phrase you want the image to rank for, and include a small amount of highly targeted copy.

8. Image Link Anchor Text
If you are linking to a full size version of am image (whether it be a unique page, or just the image itself), use relevant anchor text. Rather then saying “enlarge” or “full size” consider incorporating the target word or phrase into the link text. “Large Victoria hotel photo” for example.

9. W3C compliant
In order for images to be W3C compliant your image will also require the height & width attributes to be present. Be sure to include these for a few extra points.

10. Google Image Labeler
This is not really a tip, but I do find it to be relevant for this article. If you are taking a break and looking to try a fun little game check out Google’s Image Labeler.

Google Image Labeler matches two players who then ad labels to random images. Once a label is matched, they are awarded points, and move onto the next image. While the game is not a regular pastime for me but it is fun to try a couple times at least. The idea is that by having people play this game it will assist Google in associating and matching images to search phrases.

Properly optimizing your images can help you drive a bit of extra traffic to your website. While you may not see any extensive spike in traffic from a top ranking within the image search, if your image finds its way to the regular web search for a popular term very good things will happen to your stats.

How To Optimize for Google Images – 10 Tips is a post from: StepForth Web Marketing Inc.

Google’s New Search Options

Scott Van Achte — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 22:59:17 +0000

Earlier this year Google launched a side panel called “Search Options” which allows users to refine their search results. Yesterday they expanded the available options to include a number of new filters.

Now when you perform a Google search, but clicking the “show options” link at the top left, you can filter your results with the following options:

Past Hour & Specific Date Range
This option will allow you to filter results based on a specific time period. Say you are researching some current events, by selecting the “past hour” you will remove any similar news stories from the past and be left with the freshest information at your fingertips. For instance, say you want information on the latest tsunami, a regular search for “tsunami” displays Wikipedia’s definition of the word, and some info of the 2004 disaster, but by clicking “past 24 hours” the search results are entirely related to the events of the past few days.

More Shopping Sites & Fewer Shopping Sites
This tool is handy whether you are doing market research for a product or looking to actually order it. By increasing the number of shopping sites displayed, you can more easily locate an online retailer to purchase from; decreasing will show you more review and informational websites.

Visited Pages & Not Yet Visited
This is relatively self explanatory – This filter will weed out all pages you have either seen, or not seen. This is particularly helpful if you are trying to find a site you have visited in the past. Note: This feature only works when logged into your Google Account with Web History enabled.

Books, Blogs, & News
If you only want to see results from Blogs, News or Book sites, then these options are for you.

These 9 new options were created to help make the end search experience easier. If you are searching for something very specific, consider giving some of these a try to weed out the stuff you are not interested in.

Google’s New Search Options is a post from: StepForth Web Marketing Inc.

Google Base Beta is Rebranded Google Merchant Center

Ross Dunn — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 21:37:30 +0000

This Monday Google launched a new face for Google Base called Google Merchant Center which allows ecommerce businesses to upload product feeds to Google so individual products are searchable via Google Product Search (once known as Froogle).

I am not sure what drove the reasoning behind this transition but the new name definitely makes more sense to the average user. Google also removed the “beta” element of the Google Base logo which is another indication that Google Merchant Center is the polished edition of Google Base.

Here are the benefits of Google Merchant Center as noted on the brand spanking new home page:

As far as I know there is no change in terms of the benefits offered using this service over Google Base except that Google claims it “should” be easier to use. That said, I don’t claim to be a Google Base expert by any means. If you have any input on this please feel free to comment and inform your fellow readers.

Is Google Base beta Completely Gone? No, Google has stated that there are still users that need to upload non-product data who will be using Google Base for now as it has some facilities that Google Merchant Center does not currently have. To quote Google’s blog post on the subject:

Google Base is still available for other types of structured content, but the Merchant Center provides a better, optimized experience specifically for product listings. The Merchant Center is where we’ll continue adding features and improving the tools for uploading and managing product listings.

That said, I expect Google Base will be phased out as soon as possible since the the new name “Google Merchant Center” does not preclude integrating the non-product submissions in the near future – and why bother having to maintain two merchant access points?

Google Base Beta is Rebranded Google Merchant Center is a post from: StepForth Web Marketing Inc.

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Video – How Google Penalties Can Help Your Site

Ross Dunn — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 22:05:18 +0000

This Web Pro News video was taken at the Search Engine Strategies Conference in San Jose a few weeks ago and drives home some points about how to react to a perceived or actual Google penalty that I think are worth sharing to our audience. You can also see the full article on this subject that was the inspiration behind this video: How a Google Penalty Can Make Your Site Stronger.

Video – How Google Penalties Can Help Your Site is a post from: StepForth Web Marketing Inc.

Gmail Down Again – This Time Contacts are Inaccessible

Scott Van Achte — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 16:56:33 +0000

This morning my daily routine was slightly interrupted. I logged into GTalk to say good morning to Ross, and all my contacts were mysteriously missing. I then checked my Gmail account, and all my contacts were gone there too (not surprising as the two are pretty much one in the same).

The first thing I did was put this out to the people of twitter, and I got a few responses that others are having the same issue.

So there we have it, Yet another Gmail outage… Hopefully it will be all up and running smoothly soon, this is a rather small inconvenience for me, but I imagine that there are vast numbers out there who are finding this to be a much more serious issue.

Will update this post as we learn more about what is going on.

Update (10:10 PST):
Well wouldn’t you know it, literally moments after posting this story, all of my contacts had returned, and Gtalk and Gmail were functioning as normal. It must have been my blog post that fixed it.

Gmail Down Again – This Time Contacts are Inaccessible is a post from: StepForth Web Marketing Inc.

Google Underwhelms with Interface Change